I've always been curious as to what different anglers used when they first experienced angling. For me it was the summer of 1950 in eastern South Dakota USA on a small stream. At the age of five I was rather small so couldn't use a bamboo pole which most anglers used then. My father used a bait multicaster, but it was too heavy and got backlash too much for me to use so he took the car radio antenna from an old Chevrolet that telescoped out to 9 feet and attached a 12 foot braided line. To this was added a large bait hook, heavy weight and large red and white float indicator. This set-up was then baited with either a live minnow or large earthworm and cast out to wait for the fish. Fortunately the water was quite deep just a few feet out(eight feet) and I didn't have to cast far. The number of fish and the variety of species I caught on that rig over the next few years was amasing-bass, walleyes, bullheads, carp, dace, pike, perch, sunfish, crappies and chubb. I eventually graduated to a bamboo pole, but didn't catch all that many more fish. I was eleven before I used my first baitcaster and was I ever relieved when spinning outfits came in, but to me that first car antenna will always remain in my memory

1954 garden cane old nylon fishing line and bent pin, cork from beer bottle for float. bread and worms old brick pond, and river rother, west sussex

1954, steel tank aerial fitted with turned wooden handle and ceramic lined rod rings which rattled violently on getting a bite, old centrepin type reel, what was known as 'penny line' (braided cotton I think) about 2 feet of redundant catgut, cut and folded pieces of lead sheet for weight, size 4 bait hook, worms - loads of finnock and seatrout! River Ythan, Aberdeenshire.

My first fishing rod was a 6' cane rod with matching reel. They matched well...they were both cr@p. Even at the tender age of 10, without any knowledge of angling, I knew it was not a proper fishing rod and reel. Fortunately on the eve of our family holiday, the first in years, to a caravan near Keswick in the Lake District, my Dad was given a horse racing tip and he won £90 - more than a month's wages in those days for him.
The next morning before we caught the bus, My Dad took me into the fishing tackle shop in the Haymarket in Newcastle and bought me a 6' Edgar Sealey, White Wonder, solid fibre glass spinning rod and an antiquated second hand Allcock fixed spool reel. I was so proud to be a proper angler at long last.
I cant remember actually catching anything that holiday but unkown to me, I was filmed standing in a river, with my new rod and reel, trousers rolled up to the knees, casting my one and only spinner. The film was used by the then new BBC 2 channel as an intermission piece. Been fishing ever since.

I made my first rod in 1951 from a tank aerial wooden brush handle and safety pin rings taped on with insulation tape. Someone gave me a small brass centre pin reel. I bought sea line for the reel and attached a small amout of nylon line. I'd one float a packet of hooks and dug up worms from the garden. I was seven. I never caught a fish until I graduated to a split cane spinning rod and an Intrepid spinning reel. My school friends and I poached on the River Ribble in areas that no one had been for years. In those days the river was so polluted the fish smelled of sewerage.

BK

The very first rod I used was a 8ft greenheart 2 piece and a bakelite centre pin. I caught my first fish ( a perch ) on it when I was about 8. My first proper rod and reel which wasnt a hand me down was an edgar sealey 7ft solid glass spinning rod and an intrepid black prince fixed spool reel . I used that rod for every type of fishing you could think of and it caught hundereds of fish for me......

Andy


Becks and Brown Trout

1968 ish. An old 6ft rod, can't remember the make, mitchell reel, a few floats, spinners and worms. Caught Perch by the dozen in Forestfield resie. Went there by bike, 10 mile round trip. Oh how things have changed.

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Eddie
"We look to Scotland for all our ideas of civilisation."
Voltaire

7' winfield spinning rod and reel for sea trout and salmon, came with one spinner, which I still have, however, what I didn't have was a cats chance in hell Did get some bass on it though

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http://www.flyfishinglessons.co.uk
http://www.aapgai.co.uk

My first rod was a tank aerial sea rod bought to keep me amused on a Cornish holiday. When I started fishing the Wye/Monnow I used a 8' Forshaw's fibre glass spinning rod with an Intrepid Elite fixed spool and this did me perfectly well for all my coarse and trout fishing until I got my first Sealey solid glass fly rod (horrible) and I was 17 before I got a "proper" rod.

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“There is no more lovely country than Monmouthshire in early spring. Nowhere do the larks sing quite so passionately, as if somehow inspired by the Welsh themselves. There is a blackbird on every thorn and a cock chaffinch, a twink as they call him there, on every bush...... It moved me profoundly. I had been spared to see another spring, and I thank God for it.”

Oliver Kite
“A Spring Day on the Usk”
A Fisherman’s Diary

My first coarse-fishing rod was expertly made by my father. It was a twelve foot, three piece rod. The top piece was Greenheart and the other two sections were made of Spanish Reed. I still have my fathers rod, it last saw action on the Trent in 1962.

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How poor a thing, sometimes I find,
Will captivate a greedy mind - Isaac Walton.

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